An in vitro hand simulator for simultaneous control of hand and wrist movements
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Sharif Razavian, Reza
Dreyfuss, Daniel
Katakura, Mai
Horwitz, Maxim
Kedgley, Angela
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
A human hand is a complex biomechanical system, in which bones, ligaments, and musculotendon units dynamically interact to produce seemingly simple motions. A new physiological hand simulator has been developed, in which electromechanical actuators apply load to the tendons of extrinsic hand and wrist muscles to recreate movements in cadaveric specimens in a biofidelic way. This novel simulator simultaneously and independently controls the movements of the wrist (flexion/extension and radio-ulnar deviation) and flexion/extension of the fingers and thumb. Control of these four degrees of freedom (DOF) is made possible by actuating eleven extrinsic muscles of the hand. The coupled dynamics of the wrist, fingers, and thumb, and the over-actuated nature of the human musculoskeletal system make feedback control of hand movements challenging. Two control algorithms were developed and tested. The optimal controller relies on an optimization algorithm to calculate the required tendon tensions using the collective error in all DOFs, and the action-based controller loads the tendons solely based on their actions on the controlled DOFs (e.g., activating all flexors if a f lexing moment is required). Both controllers resulted in hand movements with small errors from the reference trajectories (< 3.4◦); however, the optimal controller achieved this with 16% lower total force. Owing to its simpler structure, the actionbased controller was extended to enable feedback control of grip force. This simulator has been shown to be a highly repeatable tool (< 0.25 N and < 0.2◦ variations in force and kinematics, respectively) for in vitro analyses of human hand biomechanics.
Date Issued
2022-02
Date Acceptance
2021-09-02
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 2022, 69 (2), pp.975-982
ISSN
0018-9294
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
975
End Page
982
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
Volume
69
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Identifier
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9531379
Grant Number
EP/R020809/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Engineering, Biomedical
Engineering
In-vitro hand simulator
tendon driven
hand control
grip control
real-time optimal control
JOINT MOTION
MUSCLE FORCES
BIOMECHANICS
SYSTEMS
Biomedical Engineering
0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
0903 Biomedical Engineering
0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-09-08